Automobile manufacturers are investigating radar, lidar and vision-based pre-crash sensing systems to improve occupant safety. Such pre-crash sensing systems can be used to deploy active or passive countermeasures to enhance injury mitigation. Such pre-crash sensing systems provide advance warning of imminent collision events such that safety systems can be pre-armed or deployed just prior to impact so that their effectiveness can be maximized.
Vehicle-to-vehicle collision compatibility is an increasingly important safety issue for the automotive industry. That is, the crash compatibility of passenger cars, light trucks and vans in vehicle-to-vehicle collisions could provide potential improvements for passenger safety. An important element in the incompatibility of, for example, passenger cars and light trucks during a collision event, is due to the geometric mismatch between impact-absorbing structures (such as bumpers and longitudinal rails) on the vehicles during collisions. Thus, in cases when a light truck or sport utility vehicle collides with a passenger car, such impact-absorbing structures are not always directly aligned or involved in absorbing the crash energy. Misalignment of these structures can result in higher passenger compartment intrusion levels due to less than desirable energy absorption by the impact-absorbing elements in mismatched front-to-front and front-to-side collisions. Accordingly, to reduce the likelihood of occupant injury, there exists a need for safety systems which can remedy or mitigate geometrical mismatches between vehicles. Further, due to variation in vehicle loads, the vehicle ride-heights before a collision event could also vary. Consequently, there exists a need for new methods and systems to provide improved vehicle-to-vehicle collision compatibility.